Saturday, August 31, 2013

Thank
goodness for the House of Commons, and especially those Conservative members
who broke ranks with the government over a military strike on Syria. The US could still go it alone. It would be a
punitive strike, which is in breach of international law, but the US has never
cared much for international law. They have said that a strike would be
‘specific’ and that its function would be to deter Damascus from using chemical
weapons again – clearly an attempt to don the ‘R2P’ (responsibility to protect)
mantle.

What utter bunkum – all it will achieve if it goes ahead is to weaken
the regime’s ability to deal with the insurrection. Perhaps al-Qaida will send a
thank-you postcard to the White House afterwards.

But haven’t
we been getting way ahead of ourselves with all this talk of military action? All the invective and innuendo
notwithstanding, the fact remains that we still don’t know who used that awful
stuff that killed hundreds of people. One would have thought that priority
number 1 at this stage should be establishing who is responsible for this war
crime. The trouble is that conclusions were reached just hours after the event
without any niceties such as evidence being involved in those conclusions. The
day of what appeared to be a chemical attack in the outskirts of Damascus, William
Haig was venting his spleen against the al-Assad regime which he claimed was
responsible, and the White House jumped on the bandwagon shortly after.

One fool who appeared on the BBC in a snippet
about the just-arrived UN chemical weapons team said the chemical had been
delivered by a ‘ballistic missile’. I sure hope he’s not one of the ‘experts’
as he needs to look up ‘ballistic missile’ on Wikipedia – the little short-range
rocket shown on the report is no more a ‘ballistic missile’ than a
single-engine Cessna is a jumbo-jet.

One thing now seems clear enough: yet again,
chemical weapons have been used in the Syrian conflict. The question was then,
and is now, who has used them. The White
House claims that there is ‘no doubt’ the regime was the culprit, but we have
not been privy to the evidence, on the assumption that there is any – this is,
after all, a country that went to war against Iraq based on the existence of
Saddam’s WMDs, which turned out to be a pure fabrication.

Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama have both opined
that it is unthinkable that anyone but
the regime could have been behind this attack, the implication being that it
required a level of technological sophistication ‘the opposition’ would not be
able to avail itself of. Setting aside the fragility of any accusation based on
the convenient assumption that nobody else could
have perpetrated a certain deed, this assertion is seriously flawed when judged
on its own merits. Sarin is not particularly difficult to make. A product of
1930s chemical technology, you could produce it in a well-equipped high school
chemistry lab. Various groups have had access to it – recall Aum Shinrikyo’s
attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. The delivery system – that rather primitive
rocket – could be made in a none-too-sophisticated workshop. We are dealing
with pretty basic technology and both the chemical and the rocket could have
been sourced from almost anywhere. The Middle East is awash with weaponry of
that kind, both industrially and non-industrially manufactured.And it could definitely have been shot
off from anywhere in that area by almost anyone – no specialist training
required.

No, that doesn’t prove that the regime didn’t do it. But one could well ask
oneself what act of self-defeating madness it would be for the regime to use
chemical weapons on the heels of the UN inspection team arriving. The al-Assad
government is trying to convince the world that it is fighting terrorism, and
is playing by the rules. What they could hope to gain from such an act of
stupidity is just about impossible to imagine. But it does make perfect sense
for ‘the opposition’ (who? Al-Qaida? The al-Nusra Front? Foreign jihadis?) to
do just that, anticipating the response of the Western powers. As for wiping
out a few people of another ‘opposition’ group – or any old bunch of civilians
for that matter – anyone who thinks that would prickle the conscience of
characters like those heading some of ‘the opposition’ bands of cutthroats should
take a return ticket from Cloud Cuckoo Land to Planet Earth.

True, the Syrian authorities were not very
cooperative at first. But they are under an obligation to protect the UN team,
and were not in control of the area where the attack occurred. A Syrian
‘national council’ fellow in Turkey hastily assured the team of their safety
should they enter the area. Who is he to give such assurances, pray tell? He
issues the orders to the 50+ ‘opposition’ groups including al-Qaida, does he?
Time for a reality check! You will recall that, as it turned out, a sniper
opened up on the UN inspection team convoy when it got to the site, and it was more
luck than management that saw to it that nobody was killed.

Haig’s attitude is particularly worrisome.
English law became evidence-based nigh on 800 years ago. Even if it turns out
that he is correct, he was in no position to deliver that verdict before the
evidence was in. This is the stuff of mediaeval witchcraft trials in Germany
and France, not the stuff of English law and not, one would hope, the stuff of 21st
century international law.

POSTSCRIPT

The day
this article was submitted, the White House released some of the evidence that
they claim implicates the regime as the perpetrator of this war crime. No
‘smoking gun’ was presented, but rather a narrative woven together from various
observations and intercepted communications. No doubt the narrative has
persuasive power – narratives cobbled together from bits and pieces of data are
tailor-made to have just that.

My aim in
writing this article was to point out that the conclusions regarding
culpability have preceded the evidence throughout, and that this is
unacceptable by the norms of civilised law. It also casts a shadow over the
evidence presented, which needs to be subjected to intense and critical
scrutiny. According to the maxim of “presumed innocent until proven guilty”, my
case at this moment in time remains that we still do not know who was
responsible. The White House claims that it has more. I am with President Putin
when he says that they should reveal this evidence to the Security Council; put
up or shut up. In the meantime, to use language that they may actually
understand, “Put that there six-shooter back in its holster, boy. You ain’t
goin’ shootin’ no Injuns today.”

Dr Barend
Vlaardingerbroek has been at the American University of Beirut since
2004. Feedback welcome at bv00@aub.edu.lb.

2 comments:

Who knows 'who did it' fact is both sides are evil and both are capable.Its amusing that the same world who is critical of everything the USA does now expects it to be the global policeman. Why should America do anything, risk its service mens lives spend millions on munitions and for what result. Its taking so long the Syrian regime must have long ago moved or evacuated likely targets and when its all over even more people will curse the USA. Where is the outcry about the country's like Russia and Chinese who supply all these weapons guns and bombs. Where do they get all those AKs and bullets from?

Post a Comment

Thanks for engaging in the debate!

Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.

Please note - if you use the new REPLY button for comments, please start your comments AFTER the code. Also, the Blogger comment limit is 4,096 characters, so to post something longer, you may wish to use Part 1, Part 2 etc.

Subscribe To

Welcome to Breaking Views

Breaking Views brings you expert commentary on topical political and policy issues. The views expressed are those of the author alone. The blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, an independent public policy think tank at NZCPR.com - register for the free weekly NZCPR newsletterHERE.